Your Monday Inspiration: The More Things Change, The More They Get Brittle, Old, And Crumbly

I've been parking the bike outside lately, so who knows how long the little fucker was clinging there. In fact, I'd just ridden the bike a half hour before, and I doubt the cicada crawled onto the tire, out of its shell, and then oozed off in that short amount of time. More likely, the crisp, vacated little thing has just been spinning round and round on there for days until I finally happened to notice it.

It's currently Hot As Balls™, and the cacadas are belting out their cacophonous staccato cry from their throbbing abdomens. I've been hearing that sound every year for my entire life, and it means the "dog days" are upon us. It's the sure sign that summer's thrilling promise is essentially over and you're just going to bake listlessly in the heat until school starts again. (The dreadful back to school feeling never leaves you, even when you don't have to go to school anymore.) The cackle of the cicada fills me with a wistful dejection--especially when it mixes with the sound of lawnmowers, as it did where we lived when I was a kid, and as it does where I live now. "Suburban ennui," I suppose you could call it. It especially reminds me of the kid in day camp who would put cicadas in his mouth, let them crawl around on his tongue, and then bike their heads off. He's a veterinarian now, I G--gled him.

He might even be your veterinarian.

(Dr. Meh-ngele, DVM)

Besides boyhood memories, cicadas also evoke the idea of cycles, and cycles can be either inspiring or depressing, depending on your mood when you're thinking about them. For example, the whole chrysalis-to-butterfly thing usually makes people happy. (Unless you're Jame Gumb.) But as I contemplated the familiar cicada larva shell and the hopeless life cycle of this stupid insect, I thought about my own life cycle as a cyclist, from exuberant child to BMX racer to adult Fred to crusty, brittle old crank who rides a Brooks:

As I stood there and stared, I realized I was looking at myself:

Yes, this is me, and it's a more accurate rendering than any smartphone "selfie." Hunched over the bars, hollow inside, resigned eyes looking hopelessly forward in a look of pain that transcends Rapha-esque suffering and attains actual despair... This, I realized, is who I am:

It was another incredible display of strength by Froome, who one by one dropped all of his rivals until he was alone with teammate Richie Porte and Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff). With 7.5km to go, Froome jumped and Contador could not respond, and the maillot jaune holder set off in pursuit of Quintana, who had attacked on the lower slopes.

I know we're supposed to believe that this dominant Ventoux performance is different from all the ones that came before it, but the wheel of Tour de France history is littered with the crusty shells of past champions, so when you're a crusty shell like I am it's increasingly hard to make the investment. Really, it's just awkward at this point, as Jason Gay's last Wall Street Journal column articulates well:

Bike racing can be riveting, almost gorgeous—those TV helicopter swoops over French châteaus should be bankrolled by the ministry of tourism—but the sport's leadership has been infuriatingly prideful and stubborn, allowing traditions to erode into punch lines, undermining racers and teams actually trying to win the right way. Cycling fans can get righteous about this ridicule (at least bike racing—unlike your flaky sport—is doing something about its doping!) but the core emotion is a kind of scarred sadness that comes with taking a pounding for too long. If you love this beautiful, maddening sport, you just want this beautiful, maddening sport back.

You know your sport's in trouble when the nicest thing people can say about it is that it has pretty scenery. I give it ten years before they dispense with the riders altogether and the Tour de France just becomes this:

On the other side of the equation, a bicycle is crap when it is made without love by crap corporations run by crappy, cynical people. A big bicycle corporation knows with precision that their brand new crap aluminum frame will creak and rattle after just a few weeks.

Okay. Mine creaked immediately. Nicely done.

Well, a reader forwarded me the following story, which offers a window into Old Man Budnitz's "creative process:"

After awhile he approached us with an idea of helping him build a bike company under his own name. He wanted us to make him replicas of the bikes we had already made with the potential to go over seas and have them massed produced. As you can imagine we felt like this wasn't the best idea for our company and went against why we build these bikes with our own hands here in Colorado in the first place. Nothing against bikes made out of country and in Asia as many are high quality and almost all are handmade by skilled workers. It just sounded boring and not our style. So we told him we weren't interested. Mr. B however is a man with money and the means to do as he pleases so he took our bikes had them replicated(kind of) at another American bike company and now has some being produced over seas.

People have been asking where we found original inspiration for our bicycles. Above is the 1946 BSA Paratrooper folding bicycle — the twin-cantilever design we use has actually been around for almost 100 years.Twin top tubes serve an important function, combining vertical flex with horizontal stiffness. Modern frame tubing (and materials such as cro-moly steel and titanium) have allowed us to fine tune the ride of each of our models differently.Swedish Army versions of this bicycle also served as inspiration for our No.2 Paratrooper Limited Edition, currently for sale on our site now.

Yeah, right. Either way, I sure hope Old Man Budnitz builds plenty of "vertical flex" into his douche chariots, because you're going to need it to dampen the grand mal seizure-like "douche chills" you'll experience while riding it.

“I don’t like the mix of buses and taxi and bikes altogether. Who’s going to get hurt? Me!” Alessandra Ambrosio (center) said Wednesday during a cancer-research fund-raiser at SoulCycle studio in the West Village.The Brazilian bombshell said she rides her bike in LA but wouldn’t dare rent one in the Big Apple.“I’m just a little concerned with safety, being on a bike with crazy cars in the middle of the street. I like sports away from traffic,” she said.

She feels safer riding a bike in LA? Like Los Angeles LA? Wow.

Anyway, I fear the tabloids may have reached the outer limits of both relevance and lack of intellect when it comes to asking people for their opinions on Citi Bike, because if they haven't then this is the next logical step:

Scoff if you want, but that tapir has a Pulitzer and sits on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

"Facebook competition time - Yay!...or more appropriately, Tres bien! The Tour de France is in its centennial year and as a fitting tribute Knog have put together a one-off Tour de Knog cycling kit for one lucky punter to get their hands on. This kit includes; a set of Blinder Road lights, a Knog cycling Jersey, cycling cap, patch kit, spare patches, 12-tool kit and a Milkman lock.All you have to do is head over to the Knog Facebook page and click on the competition link to enter. Bon chance mes amis!"

Mr. Bike Snob, Boise had it's annual "Twilight Criterium" last Saturday and even though the thought of hanging around an elite "Fred fest" gives me the shakes, I really enjoyed watching it. A good many of the folks watching the event, showed up on bicycles, as evidenced by the number of bicycles parked around the area, and interestingly, most of the bikes were cruisers, comfort bikes or mountain bikes. I suspect a good many "Fredly" fans drove to the event because the idea of chaining their $5,000.00 "Fred bike" to a tree or riding it without wearing the full kit was out of the question.

“Hunched over the bars, hollow inside, resigned eyes looking hopelessly forward in a look of pain that transcends Rapha-esque suffering and attains actual despair... “Ride a cruiser. Hunching over is not all it is cracked up to be. Ask the Hunch Back of Notre Dame.

Speaking of loser.This mornings news cast had some purchasing advice from "experts" who recommend NEVER buying certain items new. Brand name clothing-goes on sale end of season and exercise equipment-bicycles. They then went on to say "most racers rent their bikes and return them at the end of the season and the shop sells them at a discount".

What the fuck is wrong with americans, bicycles and paying retail?Even the clueless non-cyclist are being told not to pay retail. There will only be walmart bikes and artisinal bikes one day.

ugh...I watched Ventoux, and I watched some big names get dropped before they even hit the mountain and some guys effortlessly breeze up the hill, to which I commented to others, "test his pee, twice". Then comes the standard, "innocent until proven guilty" (you know, like OJ Simpson, George Zimmerman). # times wrong about this in the last 25 years, zero.

Perhaps they could rechristen the Tooer day France as a helicopter race. Competing teams could be judged both on time for completion of each day's route and for the quality of the images that they capture along the way.

This shit's all poetic today. Never before has a blogger stared so unflinchingly into the howling cavernous black maw of human futility.

Did you go "PEW!" when you flicked away the Cicada Husk of Despair?

Ol' Man Buttnutz sure is funny, with the funny lying. What a kidder!

I was gonna bike to work today but then I was all like "Wait... WWBYSDFACD?" (What would bland young she-douches from another country do?) And don't you need to actually have some body mass to be considered a "bombshell?" Like now scrawny-ass little girls get to be "bombshells?" I dunno, if you're gonna use an old-ass term like "bombshell," you're inviting the comparison to Marilyn Monroe et al... IF YOU KNOW WHO THEY WERE THAT IS. A bombshell is HEAVY, betch, and when it drops, there's a huge explosion... in somebody's pants. This one's a dud.

"The term bombshell is a forerunner to the term "sex symbol."" Wikipedia. Hourglass figures and large breasts. Ann Margaret, Raquel Welch and Sophia Loren to name just a few! Before Twiggy showed up and made the emaciated look popular.

WIWM had to bring up Kafka, who states that one who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off his despair over his fate, with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

With the Cicada Husk of Despair (thanks RF) Snobber has summed up my cycling futility and has pointed out that as he flicked away the dried up husk, so I also need to flick away so much desiccated baggage.

Indurain parade=lots of Spanish Tour watchers on the telly. Check.Lance parade=lots of US Tour watchers on the telly. Check.Team Sly parade=lots of Brit Tour watchers on the telly. Check.What's next?I'm afraid to ask. Putin on a bike? Not a bad idea really.

I am not on facecrack why KNOG why do you do things like this to me and all those other companies have these extra special prizes but it's all through facecrack! No Rad at all cowards. I hate Hate all "Social Media" Talk to people outside of the computer. I know people blow snot! I am the First to admit I have no friends it's just me and my four bicycles and books. Call me pathetic but I cringe everything I see people attached to there phones (who always walk blindly into traffic while I'm riding) or hear about "Social Media"!

Rock Machine, have a look at this article (google translate translates it pretty well), it's an article by a leading Dutch newspaper about cyclists getting killed and how it's their own fault:http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1100/Consument/article/detail/3476464/2013/07/16/Racende-wielrenners-terroriseren-fietspaden.dhtmlAlso make sure to skim the comments and discover that the people in Germany's Vermiform Appendix are at least as mentally challenged as they are in Canada's Scrotum:http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1100/Consument/article/detail/3476464/2013/07/16/Racende-wielrenners-terroriseren-fietspaden.dhtml?show=react

Whoa, I feel bad. Froome was questioned about doping yesterday, and he says he was not doping, right then, during the interview. So, along with 25 years of watching dopers win mountain stages, we now have 25 years of heartfelt denials. Froome is a gentleman, not a sungle cunt was heard

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!